tuesday 7.4.2006 independence day! (denali)

Posted in alaska on July 10th, 2006 by jenni | No Comments »
Tags: alaska, denali, hiking, holidays, mountains, national parks

We got to sleep in on the 4th of July, getting up shortly before 8am to make the 9:30 bus to the Toklat River station. It was clearer, with no sign of rain for once. We called home to reassure my mom that we were alive, then went to the visitor center for coffee. The girl there remembered me, which of course meant we were already regulars.

morning fog

Our bus driver, Rich, was great. He had a story about everything, and went around the bus asking people where they were from. He talked about the moose rut and sports with equal amounts of enthusiasm.

mom and baby bear

polychrome pass

We rode to Polychrome Pass, and decided to hike from there. We talked to Rich about the routes in the area, which were all really just game trails. The paths on top of the pass were really muddy, so he suggested we grab a shuttle back to the Toklat River instead. We started hiking down the pass, being sure to talk loudly. We’d just seen bears nearby.

from polychrome pass, with glacier!

A bus came by about 20 minutes later. We flagged it down and asked to be let off at the bridge on the Toklat River. There was an Amish family on the bus, which I found immensely fascinating.

snowmelt water mixing with glacial runoff in the toklat river

We found a driveway near the bridge, and hiked down to the river. The Murie Cabin is there, and rangers use it as a research outpost. It was kind of creepy, with nails sticking out of it to keep bears from chewing their way inside.

murie cabin

Behind the cabin, there was a port-a-potty. This was a big find, obviously, because facilities are so rare, especially clean ones with toilet paper. I was freaked out at being in the middle of nowhere, though, so I left the door open and talked the whole time. It’s not like anybody was going to accidentally come across me there in the bathroom.

We hiked along the little tributaries to the river, looking for places where the ice was still packed enough to be able to walk across. We were moving pretty slowly, always keeping an eye out for animals; the rushing of the nearby river was so loud that we wouldn’t hear a bear, and it’d be unlikely to hear us. You know what’s really rattling? Knowing that you could seriously be in danger of a bear attack. That’s not something you’re often concerned about.

On the banks of the Toklat River, we sat on the stones and ate lunch. Being there is something I’ll never forget.

We walked back up to the park road, with magpies following us and yelling the whole time. We saw wild hares all over in the brush. Heading up toward Sable Pass, we entered a restricted wildlife area, which meant we had to stay on the road lest we be eaten by things. That’s how I interpreted it, at least.

notice that the sign is all chewed up by bears.

Part of the way up the pass, a bus came along, but the driver said it was out of service, and another would be along shortly. We were fine, though; the nice thing about hiking in the mountains in Alaska is it’s not like, say, the Rockies. You’re only at 4-5,000 feet, instead of 14,000. Easy! We were just constantly on the lookout for bears and wolves. Another bus finally showed up, and it was full of very tired-looking people from Wonder Lake.

The driver of that bus, Brad, was talking about some of the other sights in Alaska. The one that excited me most, and the main one I intend to go back for, is the Valley of 10,000 Smokes. It’s a valley that’s buried in 700 feet of ash from a volcanic eruption, and you can hike in it.

We got back to the WAC around 5pm, had dinner at the visitors’ center, did some souvenir shopping, and then decided to drive back along the park road to see if we could find any more animals. Not only did the sun come out briefly, we saw a wolf! We turned around at the Savage River and headed back to the park entrance, stopping at the mercantile for breakfast supplies for our drive back to “civilization”.

i thought this was far funnier than stephanie did.

at the park exit

We went to our cabin to celebrate the 4th of July on the deck with the beverages we’d acquired in Healy. We realized that fireworks wouldn’t really work very well in Alaska that time of year, because it doesn’t get dark.

We were in bed by 10, but I set the alarm and got up at 2am to get this picture:

2am in denali on the 4th of july

You don’t really have trouble sleeping when you’ve been wandering in the wilderness all day, however.

thursday 11.24.2005: thanksgiving (budapest to prague by train!)

Posted in budapest/prague on December 1st, 2005 by jenni | No Comments »
Tags: budapest, czech republic, europe, holidays, hungary, prague, slovakia, train

keleti pu

I was awake at 4am, unable to sleep. I was having anxious dreams all night about something going wrong on the way to Prague. We got up at 6:30 and had the usual (awesome) breakfast. I watched a group of Japanese businessmen pouring kimchee on their eggs, and mixing up ramen. One of our favorite games in the hotel restaurant was to pick out the Americans. It was harder than I expected.

We checked out and took the metro to Keleti Pu, our train station. We had no clue how early one had to arrive for a train, assuming it was much like flying. We were wrong, because we were there way too early. We rolled our bags up and down the station, figuring out how things worked. We had about an hour before our train would even show up on the board. We checked with the ticketing lady to make sure we had everything we needed, and we were good to go.

In our wandering, we found the post office. We walked in and were instantly confused. None of the signs had any meaning. We finally found the right window, and waited in line forever. When we got to the window, I was worried we might get beaten up for having so damn many postcards. But the girl there was very helpful. She totalled it all up, we paid, and she pulled out 3 different stamps and an airmail sticker for each postcard. I wanted to die, but I figured we’d found a good way to kill an hour. Only she didn’t give us the postcards back. She said she’d do them herself. Wow.

We went back and sat on the platform with our suitcases. Since the station is open on one end, it was a little cold. I tried not to doze off. I sat there wondering whether they’d have food I could eat in the dining car, and whether there would actually be a dining car at all. I didn’t know! I’d never taken a train across Eastern Europe before. I decided to stock up just in case.

I wandered off downstairs to one of the million bread/pastry shops in the metro station, and returned proudly carrying a pretzel larger than my head. I was set.

our train car

Our train had come up on the board, so we rolled our way down the track and found the car. We had seat reservations, so it was easy. The train’s final destination was Zoo Station in Berlin, and according to the labels, we’d have our compartment to ourselves until halfway through the trip. Rock.

It was a six-seat compartment, with two rows facing each other. There were racks overhead for luggage, a door that slid closed, and mirrors above the seats. I discovered later that the mirrors made finding your compartment by the people in it really confusing. I’d see Bertine and go to walk into one compartment, when actually she was in the last one. Train funhouse!

the obligatory crappy mirror shot

We sat in the station for about half an hour while the train loaded, and then we were off. I was way excited about things like using the train-WC (we had started calling it the WC since arriving there), and visiting the dining car. I’m a sucker for novelty.

sitting at the station

Shortly after the train left [train movie], a guy came around checking our tickets. After that, passport control came through. They were usually a team of two, one with a stamp for the country you were exiting, and one with a stamp for the country you were entering. You could hear them coming by the chunkCHUNK of the stamp, as they progressed down the hall. Having looked at the railroad map beforehand, I figured we’d be entering Austria briefly to go through Vienna, then heading into the Czech Republic. Imagine our excitement when we looked at the passports the officer handed back to us, and realized we were in Slovakia.

dining car

Train travel is slow, and the train rocks in such a way that it makes you really sleepy. I spent the time alternately knitting and dozing. Though I hate sleeping on airplanes, it was easy on the train. I saw the towns of Bratislava and Brno, cities I’d heard a lot about in Russian classes but never expected to see. Most of Slovakia and the eastern part of the Czech Republic looked like it was made up of little fairytale villages.

We got some new compartment-friends in Bratislava. One of the guys put a big bottle of beer up on the shelf, where it proceeded to roll around a lot. There was also a teenage girl, who Bertine saw being waved-to by her mom from the platform. She looked very nervous, and didn’t say a word until we reached Prague.

We decided to try the dining car shortly after Bratislava. The guy who worked in there was awesome, and we loved him. He was so over-the-top. He didn’t want to serve me soup, because it came from a packet. I got the cheese plate instead, because, you know. Cheese. Bertine got paprika chicken, and we had Czech beers. As we were eating, we crossed the border into the Czech Republic. Passport control came through the dining car. In the back corner, we were alternately amused and annoyed by a group of crusty British guys who were bitching about not having smokes. One of them said, ‘We just went an entire country without a cigarette!’ At one of the stops, they lined up at the door, waiting for the second it opened. The train would only stop in small towns for perhaps a minute, and people would rush to get on or off. They sprang back into the dining car with a pack of cigarettes they had purchased in a mad rush from one of the booths at the station. So funny.

We paid for our food (note: the dining car is really expensive, and they made some extra money by obviously rounding up in the conversion from euros to, in our case, forint) and headed back to our compartment. The guys had gotten off the train, so only the girl was left. We spent the rest of the trip to Prague dozing off, and peering at the travel guide.

We arrived at Holešovice Station around 5:30pm. As before, we first stopped at the cash machine. Prague only had single-day travel passes, so we had to get change for the metro ticket kiosk. We stopped into a little shop to buy pop and food, and I realized I could just buy a ticket there. We were on our way to the hotel.

Thing is, I didn’t know exactly where the hotel was. It was called Hotel Ibis Smichov, and there was a Smichov station, so that seemed obvious. The directions in the guide were as if you were driving, so I had to guess. In the metro station, we were immediately stopped by a transit cop, who checked our tickets. He told me I needed another 10Kc for my suitcase. We decided to play dumb-tourist and risk it anyway.

We took the metro to Smíchovské nádraží and walked out onto the street. We didn’t see the hotel, so we walked around and tried to find street names we’d recognize from the tiny map I had. We saw a couple signs with promising-sounding names, but had no clue where we were. We were freezing, and it was dark. I tried to call the hotel, but couldn’t figure out how to dial a local number; all I knew was how to call the US. OSKAR, the local cell service, kept telling me ‘the number is being cheeky’. The neighborhood was pretty dodgy, and I was tired of rolling my suitcase over cobblestones. We finally went back to the metro station and Bertine managed to find a nice woman who knew where were were headed. She told us our hotel was actually at the previous station. We were relieved.

We hopped back on the metro with no ticket, hoping we wouldn’t get caught. We got off at Andel, and walked out to find ourselves in an infinitely nicer part of town. It was all fancy shopping and bright lights. For a second, it struck me as downtown Las Vegas.
While we stood at the metro exit looking for the street name for our hotel, a guy came up and asked what we were looking for. We told him, the Hotel Ibis on Plzenska (which I later realized was ‘Pilsner’, like the beer). He looked excited and waved us after him. I muttered to Bertine that we needed to watch out for that guy. He rushed us around the corner at the main intersection and headed down Plzenska. We could see the hotel from there, so we stopped and thanked him for his help. I dug quickly in my wallet and came out with a bunch of coins. I handed it to him and he said no, and pointed at my wallet. I said, ‘Sorry! Thanks!’ and we hurried off. I’m pretty sure he probably ended up with more Hungarian forint than koruna.

hotel ibis smichov

We were so happy to find that hotel. We were even happier at the location. It was right by a big mall with lots of restaurants (immediately named ‘The Mall of Prague’), and a brand-new Humanic store that Bertine was positive would open up just for us. We checked in and dropped our stuff off in the room, then immediately headed over to the mall to find dinner.

big flush, little flush

thanksgiving dinner

We called the folks back home to wish them Happy Thanksgiving, and let them know we’d made it to Prague and were beyond thrilled to be there. We circled the mall and headed up to the food court, which was way nicer than the usual American version. We decided on the Turkish place. Yes, we had falafel, hummus, Turkish coffee, and chai for Thanksgiving. We rule.

giant nutella display

Afterwards, we stopped at ‘The Target of Prague’, i.e. Carrefour. It had a huge grocery on the lower level, and everything else on the second floor. We marveled at the crazy European candy, and decided to come back for souvenirs before we left. We went back to the hotel and went to bed shortly after 9pm.

monday 07.04.2005 (day five: the big island / maui)

Posted in hawaii on July 25th, 2005 by jenni | No Comments »
Tags: beach, big island, hawaii, holidays, kahului, kona, lahaina, maui, ocean

We got up early and stopped at Starbucks for coffee before heading to the airport. I was way too excited to buy the special edition Hawaiian Starbucks card, to complement my superspecial ‘original’ card from Seattle. If I was also supersmart I’d have bought extras, because baristas always try to buy them off me. Alas, I am not supersmart at all.

rock graffiti

We had discovered the night before that the Big Island has some of the most fascinating road-graffiti I’ve ever seen. North of Kailua-Kona, it’s all black-rock lava fields. People take white rock and leave messages all over. They’re everwhere, and must look amazing from a helicopter.

The Kona airport, as I’ve mentioned, is a series of tiki huts. There’s the long building with all the check-in counters, and once you get past there, it’s a few huts for gates, and restaurant/bar hut, and a shopping hut. We spent 5 minutes in the shopping hut buying tacky postcards, and the rest of the time in one of the gate-huts writing them out. Luckily, I had about 30 of them to send, or I’d have been bored to death.

kona tiki-huts

We arrived at the usual pre-flight time, which meant way too early for such a little airport. It took about 5 minutes to return the car, get the shuttle back (the shuttles at the Kona airport are completely unnecessary), and check in. This time we were flying Island Air, and the people were just as friendly. The flight was barely half an hour long, but we still got beverage service.

haleakala

We flew to Maui on a turboprop jet that was smaller than a tour bus. I loved it. We could see both of the islands at the same time from the air. I saw the huge resorts around Wailea, Haleakala, and sugar cane fields as we landed.

wailea resorts

As before, we got to climb right out onto the tarmac. The Maui airport was much bigger, though; jets are allowed to land there.

Since it was only 9:30, we decided to set out on the road to Hana, which the book described as an all-day drive (it’s 52 miles). We got the exact same car in silver and named him Captain Hook. We stopped at what was soon to become one of my favorite natural-foods markets (Down to Earth) for picnic fare, and set off on our way from Kahului.

surfers at Hookipa Beach

The road to Hana begins in Paia, a town which quickly became a favorite. It’s on the windward side,
so it’s all about windsurfing. Full of cute shops and restaurants, it’s the kind of place I love to wander. Past Paia, we wandered around Hookipa Beach at the overlook, watching the surfers and gawking at the color of the water in the tidepools. It seemed that the ocean along the beaches in Maui looked a lot different that it did on the Big Island; much more clear and turquoise.

The drive up the road to Hana is amazingly slow. There wasn’t even much traffic at that time of the morning, but it’s a tiny 2-lane ‘highway’ that turns into a single lane on bridges, of which there are more than fifty. You round a switchback at the edge of a cliff, drive down into a gulch, stop at a one-lane bridge, wait til it’s clear, then cross. Then up out of the gulch, around another tight cliff-switchback, and repeat. Each gulch had its own stream and/or waterfall coming down from Haleakala. We saw gigantic groves of bamboo, dense hanging vines, and the road was littered with flowers. We saw banana, pineapple, sugarcane, coconut, and papaya farms. It smelled like eucalyptus the whole route.

We turned off to drive down to the Keanae Peninsula, a tiny old village on a lava flow. The coast was lava rock and tidepools, with waves slamming up over the rocks. I couldn’t believe how picturesque Maui was. It was almost too much to absorb.

Outside Hana, there were roosters running around all over the road. I was a huge fan of Hawaiian Road Cock (not so much of the Hawaiian Road Weasels we saw in both living and flattened form… apparently they were some kind of mongoose). We made it to Hana close to lunchtime, and visited the famous Hasegawa General Store. I tried Maui potato chips and was unimpressed (they also made me sleepy). We considered driving the 20 miles past Hana to the 7 Sacred Pools entrance to Haleakala National Park, but the road was tiny and I later read that we weren’t actually supposed to take our rental car out there. We went back to Hana and had our picnic lunch at the beach in town, which had reddish-brown sand. After lunch, we headed back down the way we had come.

waterfall and pool

Right as we left Hana, it started raining. It was mostly heavy mist, which didn’t prevent us from getting out of the car and hiking around by a waterfall, even though we came back drenched. Then the rain really began, and we all of a sudden knew the meaning of rainforest. It was insane driving on that tiny, winding road in a downpour. I also started to understand why they said those little streams could turn into raging rivers within seconds.

bamboo grove

As we turned out of one gulch, we saw a giant rainbow. Even though we saw them daily in Hawaii, it was still amazing. We drove back to Kahului and checked into our hotel. It was another of those tacky 60s-style a-frames on the outside, but the rooms were awesome. We changed into bathing suits with our regular clothes over the top, and headed over to the other side of the island, to the resort beaches.

The western side of Maui is the leeward side, and Lahaina is the biggest town (it’s 22 miles from Kahului to Lahaina). North of there, it’s mostly beach resorts. We drove to Kaanapali and found the well-hidden public beach access. For late afternoon on the fourth of July, it wasn’t terribly crowded. The beach was a few miles long with golden sand, and we could see both Lanai and Molokini Crater from there.

kaanapali beach

Now, I haven’t gone swimming since I was in high school, and my skin crawls at the mere thought of putting on a bathing suit. But, dammit, I was in Hawaii, and I was going to swim in the ocean. We laid out our towels and bags, and as Stephanie stood there telling me how she really didn’t want people there to see her in a bathing suit, I ripped off my clothes and ran into the ocean.

It was wonderful. There were big waves coming in, so we jumped around in them and fought against the current. I didn’t like walking in the seaweed that was 20 feet out from the shore, so I started swimming up and down the beach. Stephanie got caught by a big wave and yelled at the top of her lungs, “IT’S PULLING ME OUT TO SEA!!!” I laughed so hard I almost drowned.

We watched the sun set over the ocean again, then decided it was time to head to Lahaina for fireworks. We showered and rode back into town wearing our towels, then got dressed in a parking lot. We went to a little outdoor taco place with 800 varieties of salsa, and took turns going to the bathroom on the other side of the strip mall to wash up. While we were at Starbucks getting the critically-important evening coffee, we heard the fireworks starting. We walked a block down to the main street and found an open spot from which we could see them being fired from the harbor. The fireworks were OK; they were the same standard seen in most places in the country, set to painfully-cheesy patriotic hits such as Born in the U.S.A.. However, it was incredible being there in a huge crowd of people from all over the world, gathered in that little town on Maui.

As the fireworks were ending, a couple teenagers tossed a big firecracker into the middle of a bunch of people. A woman yelled, “MY BABY!!!” exactly in that way panicked women yelled, “MY BABY!!!” in superhero cartoons of my youth. Apparently, it went off too close to her kid’s stroller for comfort. She set her husband on the teenager, and a fight started. Then the shrieky lady was crying, trying to hold her husband and his flying fists away from the stupid kids. The whole group of them had had way too much to drink. Then the cops became involved, and the fun ended.

We wandered in and out of shops along Front Street. I liked Lahaina for its touristy but not-too-tacky atmosphere; it reminded me of a clean version of New Orleans. There were a bunch of surf shops, 10 or so ABC Stores (about 5% of what Waikiki has), various galleries and souvenir shops, and lots of restaurants. I bought some clothes and a bamboo purse. We decided to come back to Lahaina during the day to see the rest of the sights, so we headed back to the car. On the drive back to Kahului, we noticed THE STARS. I had never seen the sky like that before. It was late and we were tired, so we decided to save that for another night as well. We went back to the hotel, showered sand out of our butt cracks, and went to sleep.

fri 7.4.2003 (seattle/vancouver)

Posted in west coast roadtrip on July 30th, 2003 by jenni | No Comments »
Tags: alonetrip, canada, holidays, roadtrip, seattle, vancouver, washington

I left the hotel about 8am and headed north, coffee in hand. The drive was uneventful and slow, due to the high concentration of Washington state troopers out celebrating the holiday in the best way they knew how: penalizing drivers. I pulled off at the last exit before Canada to get gas, then went into the store to ask for the bathroom key. The guy behind the counter stared at me in confusion for a long time, then turned to ask the woman who had just walked in. I wondered what he was doing at the register, since he obviously didn’t work there. The woman pointed at the key hanging on a post. I grabbed it and ran behind the building. It didn’t work in the lock, and when I looked at it, I realized it was for the men’s room.

Just then, a busload of Japanese tourists was unloading in the parking lot, and lines were forming at by the bathrooms. I went over and opened the door to the men’s room, and turned to smile at the group of men, who were exclaiming in dismay. On the way out, I handed the key to the first guy in line, who was clearly upset.

I tried to get back on the highway, but there was no northbound entrance. I had to drive south for five miles, then turn around. Note to self: don’t leave the interstate if you have time goals in mind. I got to the border around 10:30am, and waited in line. There’s a big park there, where people get out of their cars and wander around, celebrating international peace and understanding, or something.

It took about 20 minutes to get across the border. The woman in the booth asked rapidfire questions: Where was I from? (I answered, ‘Minnesota’, which struck me as strange, since I always say ‘Minneapolis’.) Was I meeting anyone in Canada? Why was I visiting? What did I do ‘there in Minnesota’? Did I have any guns or weapons, eh? I stopped at the visitor center just inside the border and got brochures and huge postcards of the Canadian flag. At the information desk, I talked to the Friendliest Woman Alive^TM, and tried not to giggle at her accent. I headed off towards Vancouver, which was 30 miles from the border. Since I am very easily amused, I was excited to be driving 100km/h. You may not know it, but the metric system is funny. Almost, but not quite, as funny as Canadians.

I make the mistake of following the signs pointing to downtown Vancouver and end up in local traffic for an hour. Vancouver has a huge Asian population, and the downtown looks more Japanese than western. There’s every kind of Asian food imaginable. I was hungry and in need of non-Starbucks coffee (the bluehouse guys had informed me that Vancouver had the best coffee in the universe). I finally found parking and wandered into Gastown. It’s the old part of the city, all cobblestones and restored storefronts. Too touristy, though; most of the shops are selling everything you could ever want, as long as what you want is emblazoned with a maple leaf.

I stopped at the Luna Cafe for a veggie sandwich and coffee. I peered at my friendly Canadian map, and decided to go see Chinatown. Within about five blocks, I crossed from cute, touristy area to crappy, dirty area with used condoms in the gutter, to Chinatown. It was not as exciting as I had expected, for a city with such a large Asian population; I was hoping for something on the order of New York. I decided to stop and see the the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden, which came highly recommended by my friendly Canada brochure.

The gardens were beautiful, and it was the perfect day outside. The gift shop was even more perfect, and I bought a ton of souvenirs. I walked from Chinatown over to Harbour Center to go up to the lookout. It’s just like the Space Needle, only indoors, and Canadian.

I went up and peered at Vancouver from above. It’s a big city. It’s proud to be hosting the Olympics. There were cruise ships in the harbor, probably destined for Alaska. There was a floating Chevron station. I was pretty sure I was the only person in the lookout tower who spoke English, which was kind of cool. Apart from the super-nice girls at the coffee bar. I was starting to sense a trend: everyone there was incredibly nice. Like, too nice. But when you passed them on the street, they didn’t even make eye contact. Coming from what I figured was the least-outgoing place on earth, this was a surprise. People more reticent than Minnesotans? It was hard to believe.

I walked up Granville Street to Robson, and wandered around the swanky shopping area. There were great little boutiques, and good fashion. There’s a huge nouveau-punk scene in Vancouver. Also, people were dressed up to shop, which was a big surprise after the ultracasualness of Seattle (where they still take ‘grunge’ literally). There were a few places on my trip where I felt completely, glaringly out-of-place, and Vancouver was one of them. I cringed when I saw a group of American tourists walking around with flag tshirts on. I walked back to my car and drove over to Stanley Park, which was across the harbor from downtown. I took pictures and giggled at the lawn bowling club. Then I drove across the bridge into Kitsitano Beach, aka ‘Kits’, the trendy shopping/dining area. I was following my friendly Canadian restaurant guide to a vegetarian place called The Naam. I got the special, pea and paneer curry with mango chutney, and a protein shake. At that moment, I was pretty damn happy with Canada.

Back in the car post-dinner, I finally acknowledged that my brakes were completely shot, and in need of replacing. Not only was my car a safety hazard, it had become an embarrassment, squealing loudly every time I slowed down. I resolved to call the Saab dealership in Bellevue the next morning, and get the brakes done before I headed to Portland, even though I was worried that they’d tell me the entire car was about to fall apart, and needed 100% replacement. But I knew it had to be done. By 7pm, I was waiting in line to get back into America. The line was longer to return, and moved slower. My car was a perpetual noise machine, even though I tried really, really hard to ignore it.

I saw several people walking across the border. At first, I thought they were just going to pre-check their stuff through customs, but then I realized they were actually walking across. To where? There’s nothing on the other side. Just a whole lot of empty Washington. Very strange.

There was a guy walking up and down the line of cars with an ice cream cart. I was bored to death waiting, so I sat and messaged Heather, which was probably costing a ton. I propped my journal up on the steering wheel and wrote, slowly squealing my way towards the US. Finally, I got to the crossing. The guard asked me a few questions and peered at my license. He ended with, “Got any meat? Transporting mad cow disease or anything?” I replied, “I’m vegetarian!” He let me go. I drove like hell back to Seattle, getting back to my hotel just as I started to see fireworks on the horizon. I decided to skip the party at the bluehouse, since I was exhausted. I went up to my room, opened the curtains, and sat with my feet up on the windowsill, calling the parents while watching fireworks. They were going off in a hundred different locations along the mountains in the horizon. After I got off the phone, I started hearing huge explosions nearby, and seeing flashing from behind the building. I pulled on my jeans, grabbed my key, and went out into the hall, barefoot and braless (if I were to publish this as a book, I’d call it ‘Braless in Seattle’). At the end of the hall, there was a Japanese tourist couple and another guy who gave me his spot so he could go upstairs to watch. They were shooting fireworks from the roof of the mall across the street. It was incredible; I’d never seen fireworks up that close, or the actual process of firing them. The show went on for a long time, rattling windows and setting off car alarms. After a while, the couple went back to their room and I was left alone. I sat and pressed my back against the glass so I could feel the explosions. I could still see a bunch of other displays off in the distance, including Lake Washington and Puget Sound. They all seemed to reach their finales at once, so I got to witness this huge fireworks orgy over Seattle. It was kind of amazing.

I went back to my room, packed quickly, looked up the number for Saab, and went to sleep.

- - - - -

random notes from my travel journal:

i’ve seen two celine dion lookalikes so far.

what’s with the blinking green semaphore?? so confused.

hey, canadians seem to be proud of their country, too. weird.

i like how they can slap a maple leaf on anything and make it canadian. sears! only canadian! ha.

did i get sunburnt today? my neck hurts. is it that obvious i’m american? apart from my accent?

ok, server boy is super cute and making much eye contact. he makes up for the other shy canadians. i’m going to leave him the rest of my canadian cash and head back to my country, which is busy celebrating itself today.

on the street downtown today, i heard someone behind me yelling my name. i almost turned and looked, then realized that no one could possibly know me here. it was such a strange sensation, knowing that i was 2000 miles from home, and absolutely anonymous. it made me sad to be so alone in a city in another country, for god’s sake.

heather just messaged that barry white died. holy shit, i’m never leaving america again if this is what happens. wait, shouldn’t those flags be at half-mast?

i almost freaked leaving vancouver when i saw a sign reading ’seattle: 222′. then i realized that was km. ha. i’m bad with converting the metric. i bought a tshirt for $22 canadian. what’s that, like $15? when i bought postcards at the visitor center, i gave her $10 us and got $10+ canadian in change.

seattle radio, which comes in in vancouver as well: nirvana (1), alice in chains (2). stuck in the 90s.

man, it’s cool that there’s a turnaround in case you change your mind and decide to return to canada. i’m not. i’ve had enough ‘aboot’ for one day.

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